The cult of Ayn Rand.

William Pfaff's "The Global Economy" (May 19) misrepresents the ideas of Ayn Rand, repeating the old canard that she was a cult leader. As both her novels and her nonfiction articles make clear, Rand was no fan of the crony capitalism that is the target of Pfaff's article. Rand's ideal of the heroic industrialist may have been an oversimplification, but she was more than a dime-store Nietzschean. Her reverence for human potential was matched by an Augustinian suspicion of our penchant for abusing power. Rightly or wrongly, she perceived capitalism as the economic system in which the individual was least likely to be either a master or a slave. Where she erred was in not seeing that bigness--the unconstrained growth of either private or public institutions, which become more indistinguishable as they increase in size--was the real enemy of personal and local independence.

As for the "cult" charge, yes, Rand was an oddball like many creative people, but at her best, she was attempting (within the limits of her misguided hostility toward religion) to restore a sense of transcendent meaning to the workaday world, as against the still-popular dualistic worldview that cuts spirituality off from its earthly roots. That's something that adherents of a sacramental, incarnational Christianity should appreciate.

JENDI REITER

Northampton, Mass.